That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup: what is it exactly?
The LA rapper Desto Dubb launched That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup, a privately held clothing label headquartered in Los Angeles. The label compresses to ALOCS, a short form used across the press material and built into garment names such as the A.L.O.C.S. T-Shirt. The range is plain on paper, covering tees, hoodies, sweatpants, shorts, denim that’s awful lot of cough syrup and accessories, and peculiar in practice, since the brand’s own name is the main graphic on most of it. Shoppers reach it under a dozen spelling variants, including alocs clothing, cough syrup clothing and the shorthand awful lot of cough syrup. Filed as THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC, the legal entity shows no apostrophe and a trailing ellipsis. Before anything else, get this straight: the brand writes “A Awful Lot”, not “An Awful Lot”, and the ungrammatical article is entirely on purpose. The bulk of searchers type thats a awful lot of cough syrup without the apostrophe; only the version with “A” corresponds to the registered mark.
Who is the brand?
Desto Dubb, a rapper and entrepreneur from Watts in South Los Angeles, is the founder and the chief executive. What you are looking at is not a design studio with a rapper attached as a face, but a rapper’s business, operated from the same network as his records. He had been releasing music for years before he sold a shirt, which accounts for much of how the company operates. He has framed other labels as built around an aesthetic, and his own as wrapped around himself instead. The result is visible in graphics that read like song titles and in drops pegged to events rather than fashion seasons.
Joshua Kashif Taylor is the owner of record on the United States trademark for the phrase, and posts on the brand’s own blog carry a matching byline. The internet hints at more about his legal name than the record will bear, and that record is light. Other names do the rounds on unsourced commercial sites and are best left alone, since for every practical purpose he is Desto Dubb.
Where did the name originate?
The phrase arrived in public through a viral clip in which an officer’s line became the brand name, and Desto Dubb turned that line into a business. Nearly every write-up retells the anecdote, and it deserves care, because material online claims the clip was staged and no primary transcript settles it. Documentation reaches the commercial outcome rather than the encounter, and the trademark record lists first use of the mark in November 2018.
The phrase itself refers to promethazine-codeine cough syrup, the prescription medicine known in rap slang as lean, and the company does not pretend otherwise. It declines treating that as a selling point, and its own site displays a standing banner reading “! PLEASE DO NOT SIP DRANK AND SHOOT FIREARMS !”. Medical and horror imagery cuts through the product names, from Big Pharma and Promethazine Tour to Paralysis and Drankenstein, as a graphic vocabulary rather than an instruction. The clothing is clothing, and the remainder of this piece deals with garments and prices.
When did the brand begin?
Use 2018. First use of the mark is recorded in the trademark filing as November 2018, and an AllHipHop profile published in November 2023 describes the label marking its fifth anniversary. Most young streetwear brands cannot muster two independent pointers to one year. There is coverage placing the earliest selling during the pandemic, but that conflicts with both markers, and the filing and the anniversary piece are the stronger pair.
It began, literally, with a van. On its own about page the brand tells of Desto Dubb selling clothes out of a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, an origin it tells on itself rather than one assembled by a reporter. That detail still defines the method: small batches, direct contact with buyers, and drops announced through social accounts instead of wholesale calendars. By 2026 there is an online store and physical retail, and even so the rhythm still looks closer to a van than a department store, with fresh batches landing every week or two.
What does the brand actually sell?
The core is heavyweight cut-and-sew basics wearing jumbo screen prints front and back. Names like King Of The Kill, Drankenstein, Juicebusters and Big Pharma run across the tees, while the Classic Cough Syrup T-Shirt is published at 6.5 oz organic cotton. Hoodies hold the heavy end, with the Classic Cough Syrup Hoodie listed at 16 oz organic cotton and hand-dyed in Los Angeles, while sweatpants use a 14 oz cotton and recycled polyester fleece. Denim is kept thin, and the Double Cup Cargo Shorts, a 14 oz garment-dyed cargo short with double-layer back pockets, is the only piece in that collection in 2026.
The brand is pinned down less by any graphic than by two details: the signature yellow woven label, repeated again and again in its own product copy, and the published fabric weight. Set per garment, fit guidance is not uniform, because the classic pieces are called true to size while the lightweight jersey tees say plainly that they run small. Apparel stretches XS to 3XL, denim and workwear sell by waist from 28 to 44, and neither a global size chart nor washing instructions is published.
What does it cost?
Easy to hold in your head, the core prices move very little. At the brand’s own store, as of September 2026, a tee is about $150, a hoodie about $200 and sweatpants about $200. Near $150 gets you denim shorts, puffer jackets run between roughly $200 and $250, belts and Dickies trousers around $250, and the Dickies jacket tops the range near $350. At the lower end a bandana runs about $25, socks and boxers fall in the $50 to $70 band, and women’s pieces roughly $48 to $160.
Prices and stock in streetwear change constantly, and that ladder is best treated as a shape rather than a quote. That band positions cough syrup clothing at the upper end of independent streetwear, well above mall-tier graphic brands and far below European luxury houses. It is likewise an authenticity signal: a $45 tee wearing this logo did not come from the company selling them at $150.
Where is it produced, and where can you buy it?
Los Angeles, and the brand prints it on the garments themselves. “Made in Los Angeles” is repeated in the product copy, and individual pieces are described as hand-dyed and printed or screen-printed in the city rather than finished abroad. A Black-owned business is how the same copy describes the company. Local small-batch production explains the numbers at these price levels, because a 16 oz cotton hoodie made here was never going to be a $60 garment.
The company keeps its own online store plus a small number of physical locations. 7669 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles is the flagship, and the company also lists 312 West 5th Street in Los Angeles and 5410 Almeda Road in Houston. There is no store-locator page and no published opening hours, so those addresses are worth confirming before travelling. Judge anything else claiming to be an outlet on the garment itself: the yellow woven label, the published fabric weight, the real price level, and whether the product name appears in the brand’s own catalogue.
Brand fact file
The details that survive checking are gathered in the table below, and the ones that do not are left out. Dates come from the trademark record and dated press coverage rather than brand mythology. Prices were read from the brand’s own store in September 2026 and are hedged, because they move. The addresses are the ones the company lists on its own social profiles, with no published opening dates. Where a claim is contested, such as the origin clip, the row records what is documented. It works best as a starting point for your own checks rather than a final word.
| Field | The record |
|---|---|
| Brand name, as the brand spells it | That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup |
| Abbreviation | ALOCS, also styled A.L.O.C.S. |
| Spellings people commonly type | thats a awful lot of cough syrup, awful lot of cough syrup, alocs |
| Legal company name | THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC |
| Founder and chief executive | Desto Dubb, rapper and businessman |
| Where the founder grew up | Watts, South Los Angeles |
| Trademark owner of record | Joshua Kashif Taylor, as listed in the US trademark record |
| First recorded use of the mark | November 2018 |
| How the selling began | Sales from a van in a downtown Los Angeles parking lot |
| Identifying detail | Yellow woven label, together with jumbo front and back screen prints |
| Headline prices, September 2026 | Tees about $150, hoodies about $200, sweatpants about $200 |
| Production | Made in Los Angeles, billed in product copy as a Black-owned business |
| Flagship store | 7669 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles |
| Other locations listed | 312 West 5th Street, Los Angeles; 5410 Almeda Road, Houston |
